General Updates

After several years of dormancy, dendrobates.org has been updated. The current format allows for easier posting of blog-like updates, where the plan is to post about current research on poison dart frogs.

Although I have wanted to update the website for a long time, it wasn’t until I was contacted by Erik Melander that the project materialized. Erik generously offered to do a website redesign (more of a resurrection, really), while also offering to stay on as website administrator.

Since the last website updates, there have been a number of new species described. One of these, Excidobates condor (Almendariz et al. 2012), is remarkable in that it is the first entirely black poison dart frog. The authors also present larval data to suggest Andinobates abditus is actually a species of Excidobates. Following these results the genus Excidobates now contains three (likely four) species: E. mysteriosus, E. captivus, E. condor, and (likely) E. abditus.

Two new species of Andinobates have been described: The first of these Andinobates cassidyhornae (Amezquita et al. 2013) is a member of the bombetes group but differs from all other species phylogenetically and bioacoustically. Superficially, the species appears similar to A. opisthomelas.

The next new Andinobates is A. geminisae (Batista et al. 2014), which is a remarkable discovery in that the species occurs in a relatively well sampled area (north Panamanian coast, east of the Bocas del Toro). This species bears a striking resemblance to Oophaga pumilio but the two species are not closely related. Rather, Andinobates geminisae is closely related to A. minutus and A. claudiae.